


Journeys

by A_Almond



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Patch 5.0: Shadowbringers Spoilers, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2020-07-09 01:47:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19879594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Almond/pseuds/A_Almond
Summary: They always let him down. Time and time again: endless disappointments. For millennia. Yet there always glints a smidgeon of hope... a light he can see even from the shadows.





	Journeys

**Author's Note:**

> This is intended to be a multi-part companion soliloquy. As such, most parts will seem short and perhaps disconnected if you have not completed the Shadowbringers main story up until the end of "Shadowbringers."

The nightmares had not abated. If anything, they came in full force, live and in vivid color. Sometimes he could even feel the fire against his skin; he could smell burning flesh. The chills lasted hours after he awoke and on particularly bad days, the explosions of warfare brought him back viscerally to that fateful day.   
  
He had earned his respite; his rest. He’d done his part. But unfortunately: none of the others had done theirs, and so he’d been called back. 

Back to the explosions and the smell of smoke; back to the stench of death so familiar and yet so alien. These worlds were not his home, try as he might to assimilate into them and become a part of their universe. His home was fragmented pieces. Putting a vase back together with adhesive did not somehow make it the same vase, did it? The shattered cracks remained. The reminders. Much like the people of the scattered realms: they were the pieces, the cracked fragments that did not yet realize just how much of them was missing. 

Disappointments, every one of them.

Except maybe -   
  
No. Thoughts like that led to even more crushing disappointment. Such was the way of things. Faith in these fragile, broken things led to more and more heartbreak. Sometimes it almost seemed like they understood. At times, they offered a glimmer of hope, of comprehension and perhaps even salvation… but they always, invariably and without fail, let him down.

“You make for the First, then?”

Elidibus. The Emissary. Dreadful bore - before and now. Mind-numbing in his dedicated resolve, never once questioning - perfect for the bearer of his title. He was efficient and meticulous; he was dedicated and he was resolved; he was also terrible at actually finishing anything he started, leaving others to make sure the ball in motion continued to roll. Hands off, their dear Emissary. Hands off. 

“Someone has to clean up the mess Lahabrea left behind.”

“That mess is here. The Rejoining is already in motion.” 

“Is it, though?” 

“You doubt your own success?”

“It is not myself that I doubt.” 

He canted his head slowly toward the figured in armor. That body did not suit someone who was not a soldier; not a warrior; not a combatant. He was capable but those were never traits that an Emissary specialized in and that did not change just because of age. Elidibus was the power behind the throne, not the one sitting it.

Just the same, his words were not to imply that Elidibus was wrong: the die was cast. All that was left was to wait for it to fall.

There was just one problem, of course - and that problem was that, “Our long-lost friend is in the First.”

Blonde eyebrows rose. Interest piqued; had he noticed something, then, that Elidibus had missed? How curious. So distracted was he with the Source that he was overlooking very important details. “That is not within the realm of these mortals’ power.”   
  
“No. And yet it is so. Your soldiers are at a stalemate. Stalemates do not exist when the Warrior of Light is present. There is only victory or defeat. A stalemate means that the Scions of the Seventh Dawn’s champion is gone.” 

“To the First.”

“To the First,” he confirmed. “So it is to the First that I depart to - in order to make sure that my years of hard work are not undone by a wayward child.” 

A wayward child with a face he remembered; a wayward child that was a fragment of someone he once held dear. It would have tasted a lie to say that there was not some part of him that sought that solace as well. A familiar toxin to lighten the grief and rage, perhaps. Seven times rejoined - was it possible that the familiarity would be for him and him alone? Or … would they -- no. Disappointments, all of them.   
  
“Do try to keep my grandson from ruining the place while I’m gone, would you? I worked far too hard to have my empire fall because of gross incompetence.” 

“Fighting them got Lahabrea killed.”

“Be careful, Elidibus - I might think you worry for my safety.” The lopsided grin he offered was thin and fake; it felt it and it looked it. He knew how it appeared. Those who did not know him would likely take it for glib - but there was a tightness at the corners of his eyes that the Emissary would recognize for what it was. His smiles had not been real in a very, very long time. He’d had millennia to perfect the act. “Comparing us is insulting, in any case. Do pass on my regards.” 

He laid down a dark, leather-bound book from the desk table and then waved over his shoulder idly. It was a practiced gesture of dismissal, the void opening in front of him to announce his departure. It crackled behind him and closed, leaving the book unobscured for Elidibus to see. It was titled ‘Heavensward.’ 


End file.
